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The fight to integrate the Audubon Park swimming pool [1]

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Date: 2024-05-10  

At 250 feet long and 150 feet wide, the Audubon Park swimming pool was labeled the largest pool in the south by the “New Orleans States-Item.” As huge as the pool was when it opened in 1928, only white children could swim in it.

Instead of yielding to a court order to integrate the pool, Audubon Park closed it in 1962.

“The park’s managers claimed that the pool had shuttered for financial reasons; it ran at a deficit and was too costly to repair,” the Historic New Orleans Collection states. “Its empty shell remained, for some, a symbol of the city’s efforts to prolong segregation.”

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, the Committee for Open Pools (COP) formed to reopen the Audubon Park pool. The racially-mixed committee was composed of 50 business and civil leaders. Robert P. McFarland, a Black man, was the chairman. A few officials, such as Congressman Hale Boggs and State Rep. Ernest “Dutch” Morial, immediately supported the committee’s efforts. Others hesitated.

Pool repair costs were an obstacle. The park estimated that the repairs would cost $430,000. COP’s estimate was about $50,000. Seeking a compromise, Mayor Victor Schiro offered to create a swimming area on Lake Pontchartrain near the Seabrook Bridge. According to the Historic New Orleans Collection, COP said that solution “would only prolong segregation.”

COP and the city were at an impasse for weeks. Then Frank Tyus, 15, drowned on May 28 in an Audubon Park lagoon. The next day, Schiro promised to reopen the pool. On July 22, he announced it would reopen in September. It actually took nearly a year.

Schiro cut the grand-reopening ribbon on June 8, 1969, allowing 1,000 Black and white children to swim together while a brass band played. The integrated pool closed in 1992. A smaller replacement opened in 1998.

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